Sunflowers are a wonderful, wonderful flower to use in summer and fall flowers bouquets. They are available in this time of year and are inexpensive. As a florist, and perhaps a home gardener, they can flower to grow for their store as long as the flowers are processed and cured properly. There is a very strong trend toward "garden flower designs," a kind of natural wild flowers and flower patch look.
Sunflowers come in a variety of dramatic late summer and autumn colors. The annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is the flower most people imagine when they think of a sunflower. They range from bright, sunny yellow to dark red, chocolate brown and all shades in between, including variegated varieties. Sunflowers have long, sturdy and durable steal. In fact, if you do not you use sunflowers as fresh flowers, hang them upside down and dry them and use them in your autumn dried flower arrangements. In your garden, they can be cut just before the flowers die off and dried in a few weeks. For design projects, it is important to leave a sufficient quantity of the stem.
Sunflowers are beautiful in a tall vase, mixed with your favorite greens, maybe a little box and eucalyptus. Statice, was flower, solid aster, and Salal leaves may also accent your container with sunflowers. Because sunflowers are large and showy, and because they are sturdy with thick stems that stand well in a vase, and this is precisely the reason they are perfect for this type of arrangement.
Some varieties of sunflowers have a big head or flower. They are usually the big sunflower varieties. Other large main varieties, a few much smaller heads that form on the lower branches. There are varieties with multiple heads. These are typically medium sunflowers. Miniature sunflowers make lovely fresh bouquets too. Florist can make use of all races. Talk to your customers. Make suggestions for them. Teach your customers to new and different kinds of flowers and leaves to try. It will make your job as a designer a lot more interesting when you use new and exotic flora. They are grateful for the unique ideas. You're the professional, that is why they trust you for their floral needs.
Just a fact for fun, sunflowers have a special property called helio-tropism, meaning that if it grows, the sunflower's face / flower head turns, the sun during the day. In the morning, the sunflower button is east to the rays of the rising sun and at night to catch the blooms on the west to the last sun as the sun sets to capture.
Natural, nutritious and attractive, sunflowers have it all. That's probably why sunflowers have spread from their homes in North America, and are now grown around the world!
